Daisy gazes into his distant eyes. ‘I think he just needs some air, Morning. He gets lightheaded, ever since our village’s invasion.’
Morning’s face crumples with sympathy. ‘Oh yes, the poor boy. And you two are only kids; it’s been such a long day. Go and have a rest, that’s an order from the new boss.’
A warm chuckle breaks out around the room. It isn’t mocking or mean spirited; it includes them in its camaraderie, and that just makes it all the worse.
Daisy puts her arm around his shoulder and starts leading him towards the back door. ‘Come on.’
‘Let’s hear it for Hansel and Daisy, my little last-minute wonders,’ calls Morning after them. ‘Hip hip…’
‘Hooray,’ cheer her aides.
Sausages the dog bounds over to see them off, wagging and licking and still overflowing with adoration and trust.
Oh, Sausages, thinks Hansel, your love is a lie. You’re only a dog, you love your human because she’s kind to you, you don’t understand… The magic throbs in him again. For a moment he almost blacks out trying to hold it in. In fact, he doesn’t manage to contain it quite enough to evade Sausages’ canine sensitivity. She whines, aware that something’s wrong.
He should have understood. He should have seen beyond her superficial and selective kindness. He should have been able to comprehend the situation a little better than a trousering dog; what a stupid hick he’s been.
‘Hip hip…’
‘Hooray!’
Their cheers, the dog’s confused whine at the innate wrongness of the magic he’s struggling to keep swallowed down, the very fact that a dog’s wholehearted affection for Morning had deceived him as to her nature… it’s all too much for him.
‘Hip hip…’
He doesn’t faint, this time. He wishes he had. He wishes even that he’d thrown up on himself as opposed to what actually happens next.
He loses control. Completely. Only for a moment, less than a second, but the power he expels in that instant is alarmingly forceful and impossible to ignore. It’s akin to a particularly loud magical sneeze. Dark, crackling tendrils of magic shoot from his head and fingers, desperate to earth themselves. The shadows in the already gloomy warehouse briefly solidify and, deep beneath his toes, the ground complains like a severely upset stomach. It all stops again as suddenly as it started, but by then it’s too late.
19
Witching Hour
Sausages yelps and runs to Morning, cringing and barking. All of Morning’s aides stop and stare, mid ‘Hooray’. Morning locks eyes with him. He can’t look away, can’t move, in spite of Daisy tugging at his arm.
When Morning speaks, it’s with a surprising tenderness. ‘It was you.’
‘Come on, Hansel,’ begs Daisy. She tugs at his frame, but all he manages are a few faltering steps towards the door. After all this time, managing to keep it secret. After everything Gretel went through to keep it hidden. He’s just ruined everything.
Quite calmly, Morning approaches him with even steps.
‘Rosier had it almost right after all, didn’t he? Just sent his men after the wrong twin.’
‘Hansel, come on!’
‘And that was your same magic in the village square when we lost Nearby, wasn’t it?’ asks Morning, in the sort of tone she would use if asking where he’d got his shirt. ‘I recognise it.’
‘Hansel!’
Morning shifts her attention to Daisy, and says with the same casual airiness, ‘And did you know about this, Miss Wicker?’
Daisy.
Daisy witnessed it, too.
Daisy doesn’t respond to Morning. Instead she puts all of her weight against Hansel’s hulky, farm-thickened frame, and shoves.
‘Hansel! We need to go!’
Hansel just about manages to shake himself out of his torpor enough to run. He allows Daisy to take his hand and lead him at a sprint out of the warehouse, down the narrow alleyways and out into the main streets.
The streets are still full of people, even at such an hour, straddling that strange time between ‘too late’ and ‘too early’. It reminds Hansel of the village square, when the huntsmen had first come for Gretel in the small hours. The odd atmosphere is the same – the disquiet, the fear. As he runs through the crowd, hand in hand with Daisy, a realisation hits him. The sick, claustrophobic sensation he’s had ever since coming to the Citadel hasn’t ever simply been down to the high walls and noisy, narrow streets. The fear Hansel has been feeling all this time hasn’t been his fear alone. There are witches here, hundreds of them. People like him, right here in the Citadel, hiding out of self-preservation just as he has always done, and terrified of being found out. Cramped densely in with them, their alarm ratcheting up as the head huntsman candidates tried to outdo one another over anti-witch rhetoric, Hansel must have magically sensed their anxiety in the same way he’d heard all those footsteps and cart rattles and shouted conversations in the packed marketplace. There’s so much magical terror here that it’s become a part of the urban ambience.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ mutters Daisy as they run. ‘Should have known!’
‘Sorry,’ breathes Hansel. This is all his fault! He never even told Daisy about his powers; she’s just had to find out about them in a warehouse full of zealous huntsmen, and all because Hansel got upset about a dog’s judge of character.
‘It’s as much my fault as yours,’ Daisy puffs. ‘She said such nice things about girls like me and Gretel, she had such a friendly face, but at the end of the day she was still a huntsman, and huntsmen hunt down magicals, it’s the whole point of them. I should have read her full manifesto or something before agreeing to help. I tell you what blindsided me – that dog. I think I must just automatically trust people who are nice to dogs.’
‘I know, right?’ Hansel manages. ‘It was a really good dog, too.’
‘Such a cute dog, I honestly can’t believe it.’
Daisy pulls him down a side street, away from their inn.
‘What are you doing?’ he pants.
‘The East Gate’s pretty small,’ she explains. ‘It’ll only be barred from the inside, and not guarded this time of night.’
‘But… your stuff.’
‘What?’
‘Your cart, all the baskets…’
Daisy stops briefly, to edge around some inconsiderately placed bins.
‘We made some silvers the first day,’ Daisy tells him, stepping carefully over a pool of assorted food slop. ‘The rest of the baskets can be the innkeeper’s fee for our room.’
‘But your mum…’
Daisy looks at him seriously. ‘Mum wants us to come home. Yes, she’d rather us come home with the work cart and a tidy profit – Mum’s still Mum, after all – but she’d rather I bring you home safe. She does love you, you know.’ She pauses for just a breath, then turns and carries on dragging him towards the East Gate. ‘We all do.’
‘But, Daisy…’
‘It’s fine.’
‘But it’s not.’ Hansel stops, keeping hold of her hand so that she turns to look back at him again. ‘Daisy, I’m so sorry.’